[ He notices how easy to read his hands are being. Forces them to still. And then places his fingertips into Bastien's hand. For the safety, if nothing else.
A bit more evenly: ]
Oh, we've inflicted our own bits of suffering on them. Have no doubt.
[ Bastien drags By’s captured hand onto his thigh, where he presses it to rest palm-up so he can trace it with his fingertips. Around the base of the palm, up and down each long finger, and around again from the beginning. There are no hidden bardic messages in his own fingers. ]
In the way that noble families do, in Ferelden. Opposition to their proposals during Landsmeets, sabotaging their agendas.
[ He's looking for messages in the patterns of those fingers on his. He's strangely comforted when none emerge. How strangely lovely it is, to talk as two normal men might talk. Not spies. Not using all their wiles to dissect the problems before them. Just two people muddling through. ]
Tragically, raiding their lands for their cattle and setting fire to their homes went out of favor when we started calling ourselves Fereldans instead of Alamarri.
Sometimes letting someone know you could have done worse and chose not to is very effective.
[ He’s pleased, to have earned a laugh in the midst of all this seriousness, and some of that lingers on his face while he returns to business and hand-tracing. ]
Have you encountered them since you left home? I suppose it would be hoping too much for some people to like you more because of it.
[ He shakes his head. Here, at least, there's less unhappiness and more sardonic wryness. ]
As it turns out, a clan prone to murdering over honor isn't terribly charmed by dissolution. If I were upright, humorless, and grim, they'd have taken me in as their own. Being as I am, however, a bawdy slattern...
[ He traces a spiral on Byerly’s palm. He can’t help noticing the nervousness. He can’t help wondering if it means he’s overstepping—again—and should ease back. But he can push through the thought and still say what he means, without stalling for time or trying to manage the outcome, and be confident that even if he is overstepping Byerly will give him time to make up for it, and that’s something. ]
Your own clan of misfits and runaways who love you very much. [ Himself, of course, but Alexandrie and Sidony too. ] Even your unseemly honorable bits.
[ His fingers curl, capturing Bastien's hand mid-spiral. He holds it there a moment - admiring the back of his hand, the lines of tendons and veins under the skin.
One would assume that there'd be something in the blood of a freeman or a peasant that would come to the surface - some physical qualities that mark him as different. Plenty of nobles claim that that's the case. You look like a peasant, they say, at times, like there's some secret feature that marks the lowborn. But Bastien's bones, his fine long limbs, his agile fingers, are as beautiful as any nobleman's. His high cheekbones and solid nose are as wonderful as they'd be if the man's parents had made a calculated match based on beauty, rather than based on whatever strategic thinking draws commoners to one another.
If Byerly had been a dutiful son, he wouldn't be holding a freeman's hand like this. If he were a proper Rutyer, he might find a lover in the lower classes, but she'd (or, if he were truly discreet, he'd) be less-than. Something to possess. Something to exploit. Not a partner in any way. Not someone who'd look him in the eye and offer assessments both gentle and blunt, who'd look after his soul. If he'd been a dutiful son, he'd never be able to keep a wife who would never produce his heirs. If he'd been a dutiful son, perhaps he could keep a married woman as a lover, but he could never keep that married woman, fortunes hitched to a Tevinter magister.
His father was a son of a bitch. Presumably still is. But...Odd and painful as the turns of his life have been, perhaps he's not so sorry to have ended up where he has. ]
That's how the Dalish do it, isn't it? Take in vagrants and ne'er-do-wells?
[ Bastien looks at By's face while By looks at his hand. He's well past the point of memorization. He used to sneak it in during glances up from letters or reports. More recently he's had mornings. Not all that many of them, but a few, when there were no scheduled meetings or pressing matters or restless, busy moods to prevent Bastien from holding very still and keeping very quiet for a little while to watch him sleep.
Other lovers—because there have been others, some of them lasting a year or more, even if the shallowness of feeling makes lover a misleading label—he'd have felt finished looking at, around now. Stories that were only as good as their twists and unresolved questions, without any humor or elegant phrasing or varying interpretations to reward revisiting them.
But he's as fascinated by the length of Byerly's eyelashes as he was a year ago.
[ The idea of a forehead tattoo is enough to make Bastien start snickering through his nose, before the shape becomes obvious and the laughter moves to his throat instead. ]
[ He makes a show of thinking. Some of his thinking is not about embellishments; it's making a mental note to ink a message below his belly button (on top of his skin, thanks) sometime when he can count on Byerly finding it. ]
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no subject
A bit more evenly: ]
Oh, we've inflicted our own bits of suffering on them. Have no doubt.
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Bits?
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[ He's looking for messages in the patterns of those fingers on his. He's strangely comforted when none emerge. How strangely lovely it is, to talk as two normal men might talk. Not spies. Not using all their wiles to dissect the problems before them. Just two people muddling through. ]
Tragically, raiding their lands for their cattle and setting fire to their homes went out of favor when we started calling ourselves Fereldans instead of Alamarri.
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What about painting your name on the sides of their cattle in the dead of night?
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"Curse the Rutyers! Our druffalo will never be the same! At least not until the next time we bathe them!"
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[ He’s pleased, to have earned a laugh in the midst of all this seriousness, and some of that lingers on his face while he returns to business and hand-tracing. ]
Have you encountered them since you left home? I suppose it would be hoping too much for some people to like you more because of it.
no subject
[ He shakes his head. Here, at least, there's less unhappiness and more sardonic wryness. ]
As it turns out, a clan prone to murdering over honor isn't terribly charmed by dissolution. If I were upright, humorless, and grim, they'd have taken me in as their own. Being as I am, however, a bawdy slattern...
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You will have to settle for being taken in as our own.
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Is that what I am?
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[ He traces a spiral on Byerly’s palm. He can’t help noticing the nervousness. He can’t help wondering if it means he’s overstepping—again—and should ease back. But he can push through the thought and still say what he means, without stalling for time or trying to manage the outcome, and be confident that even if he is overstepping Byerly will give him time to make up for it, and that’s something. ]
Your own clan of misfits and runaways who love you very much. [ Himself, of course, but Alexandrie and Sidony too. ] Even your unseemly honorable bits.
no subject
[ His fingers curl, capturing Bastien's hand mid-spiral. He holds it there a moment - admiring the back of his hand, the lines of tendons and veins under the skin.
One would assume that there'd be something in the blood of a freeman or a peasant that would come to the surface - some physical qualities that mark him as different. Plenty of nobles claim that that's the case. You look like a peasant, they say, at times, like there's some secret feature that marks the lowborn. But Bastien's bones, his fine long limbs, his agile fingers, are as beautiful as any nobleman's. His high cheekbones and solid nose are as wonderful as they'd be if the man's parents had made a calculated match based on beauty, rather than based on whatever strategic thinking draws commoners to one another.
If Byerly had been a dutiful son, he wouldn't be holding a freeman's hand like this. If he were a proper Rutyer, he might find a lover in the lower classes, but she'd (or, if he were truly discreet, he'd) be less-than. Something to possess. Something to exploit. Not a partner in any way. Not someone who'd look him in the eye and offer assessments both gentle and blunt, who'd look after his soul. If he'd been a dutiful son, he'd never be able to keep a wife who would never produce his heirs. If he'd been a dutiful son, perhaps he could keep a married woman as a lover, but he could never keep that married woman, fortunes hitched to a Tevinter magister.
His father was a son of a bitch. Presumably still is. But...Odd and painful as the turns of his life have been, perhaps he's not so sorry to have ended up where he has. ]
That's how the Dalish do it, isn't it? Take in vagrants and ne'er-do-wells?
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Other lovers—because there have been others, some of them lasting a year or more, even if the shallowness of feeling makes lover a misleading label—he'd have felt finished looking at, around now. Stories that were only as good as their twists and unresolved questions, without any humor or elegant phrasing or varying interpretations to reward revisiting them.
But he's as fascinated by the length of Byerly's eyelashes as he was a year ago.
And then he's grinning. ]
I am not getting a tattoo.
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It'll be so elegant.
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Your coat of arms?
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Any embellishments you'd like?
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[ He makes a show of thinking. Some of his thinking is not about embellishments; it's making a mental note to ink a message below his belly button (on top of his skin, thanks) sometime when he can count on Byerly finding it. ]
Stars. And grapes.